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Commentary

Visiting South Africa: Excitement tempered by fear

Commentary: Journalist returns to World Cup host country after 20 years

By

BarryD. Wood

Columnist

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Having recently spent three weeks in South Africa, I'm drawn to the first impressions of that beautiful and distant land written by journalists arriving to cover the soccer World Cup. My favorite is the tale told by the Canadian reporter, who wrote that as his plane approached Johannesburg he and colleagues rather desperately searched for the South Africans aboard seeking advice and asking whether the horror stories about crime were true.

This mirrored my own experience. Like many arriving tourists, I was concerned about personal security and was not reassured when a Johannesburg friend suggested that I not come on a flight that arrived after dark. For whatever reason I turned aside that chilling advice and found myself in the waning hours of the long flight from Amsterdam wondering if I had done something foolish in arriving at 10 p.m.

In the end, it worked out fine.

Johannesburg's airport is modern and busy. But the uncertainty of not knowing what you're getting into is palpable and debilitating. As I stepped outside, I worried that the waiting cab and bus drivers might be thieves waiting to prey on ignorant foreigners. After staying that first night at a hotel not far from the airport, I felt silly the next morning asking the friendly front desk clerk whether it was safe to stroll over to the adjacent Toyota dealership to get a better view of the magnificent Johannesburg skyline in the distance.

Later that morning, rolling along the crowded N2 freeway into town, my ethnic Sotho driver pointed to the silver Carlton Center tower where I had once worked and the abandoned luxury hotel next to it, warning that I stay away from the city center.

"Don't do it, my friend. The whole of the old central business district is dangerous, even in daytime," he said.

As we crawled though traffic toward the formerly whites-only northern suburbs, I pondered the words of a friend who had been in South Africa for 10 years before returning to America. Asked how life was different in Washington, D.C., she replied, "I can sleep at night without being awakened by the sounds of gunfire."

I was headed to Parkview, the next suburb over from where she had lived.

Over the next few days, staying with friends, I grew bolder and more comfortable with surroundings I had not revisited in 23 years. I began riding the ramshackle, irregular taxis -- minivans -- that have replaced the double-decker buses that were pervasive in the old South Africa. Wedged five abreast in the third row of a minivan, I remembered how the newest buses were always reserved for whites, while the antiquated ones carried blacks. In a week of riding today's minivans, I never met another white rider but neither did I encounter any hint of racial animosity.

In a land where murders average 50 a day, every South African, it seems, has a crime story.

Carjackings are the scariest. People routinely warn a visitor to be on guard when arriving anywhere late at night. "Watch to make sure you're not being followed," is the catch phrase. "After dark at traffic lights, always leave enough room between cars so you can make a quick escape if approached by strangers."

When I rented a Trek bike at the Linden Cycle Shop, the owner told of being carjacked in broad daylight the previous week. It happened, she said, when she emerged from her car to open the gate of her home. "I had been warned not to resist," she told me, "but I did anyway and got beaten up. They got my purse and my money but not the car."

Friends said I was foolish to bike ride through Johannesburg's northern suburbs and then along Jan Smuts Avenue for the three miles between Empire Road and the city's new "downtown" in Sandton. In fact I did it several times, mostly using the wide sidewalks and only occasionally venturing onto the busy thoroughfare. Never did I feel unsafe or witness any crime.

When I asked about traveling the 1,000 miles to Cape Town by train, friends warned against it, saying they wouldn't do it. Stephen, a university professor, said, "You can't trust the stations, and you will be vulnerable in the compartment overnight." This time I followed instructions and traveled instead by air, at a bargain price, aboard one of South Africa's new discount airlines.

Fashionable, bustling Cape Town at the tip of the continent is said to be much safer than Johannesburg, and it certainly felt that way to me. The wine country near Stellenbosch, north of the city, was as relaxed and idyllic as in the old days. In Cape Town I cycled for miles on city streets without incident.

Two weeks into my journey, I had no qualms about purchasing a bus ticket for the six-hour journey from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth in the eastern cape. The bus stations were crowded and often raucous but presented dangers no greater than what one would experience in America or Europe.

Spending a final night in Johannesburg, I learned something of the pervasiveness and subtlety of street crime. At first dismissing my host's offer to drive me the two blocks to my guest house, I was urged to reconsider, which I did. En route, I was asked if I was aware that no cars were parked on the street outside the high walls and gated driveways of the homes that we passed. I confessed that I hadn't noticed and then felt silly when told that had cars been left on the street they would surely have been stolen.

In the Economist magazine's excellent June 5 special report on South Africa, a Durban magistrate is quoted as saying that crime is so bad "that the sad reality is that it's not if, but when, you will become a victim."

Nonetheless, I find some of the warnings issued by governments to visiting soccer enthusiasts to be over the top. The Koreans, for example, have warned their citizens to never go to a restroom alone, to refrain from using public transport, and avoid going outside in Johannesburg. Similarly, the Japanese have warned their nationals to stay inside their luxury hotels and never leave their base camps.

Over the next month, each visitor will make his or her own way and register their own experiences. My guess is that most will go away having found South Africa to be a wonderful and exciting country -- a work in progress -- inhabited by diverse and exceedingly friendly people.

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